Academy’S Gumiho Is A Magical Genius [EN]: Chapter 371

Academy Gumiho is a Magic Genius – Episode 371

Academy Gumiho is a Magic Genius Episode 371

Let’s Go Back (1)

“A lot of them died.”

Squish, squish.

The floor was sticky with blood.

The basement seemed quite large, but seeing the floor in this state, it was hard to even guess how many people had died.

‘Still, if I were to roughly calculate, let’s see.’

There were about 6,700 corpses visible.

However, the blood pooled on the floor wasn’t an amount that could come from killing just 7,000 people. It was double that. To be generous, it was an amount that could only come from killing at least 20,000 people.

—Unnecessarily detailed.

‘I’m very knowledgeable about the bodies of people and magical creatures.’

It’s not for nothing that I’ve been fighting with a sword until now.

“There’s a lot of non-human stuff mixed in the blood.”

“Excuse me? Can you, can you even see that?”

A mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. A charnel ground [a place where corpses and bones are left to decay].

Luna was overwhelmed by the gruesome sight, unable to turn away from the stench that burrowed into her nose and filled her head, even if she averted her eyes.

“……Are you scared? It must be frightening.”

“Yes? Of course, I am. Isn’t this a normal reaction? Unlike you, who can see this kind of scene without being surprised and calmly ask others about it.”

“After being on the battlefield for 10 years?”

“……!”

Seven thousand people died in this small space.

Of course, it’s a large number. An incredibly large number of people died in this one night.

But what if the comparison is the battlefield?

In war, 7,000 deaths in a single day is nothing.

If you add the number of magical creatures, hundreds of thousands of lives become mere lumps of flesh and blood in a single day during war.

There may have been wars with fewer deaths, but the only war I experienced was a fierce struggle for the survival of the species. And that was the same for Luna.

“You have virtually no experience on the battlefield as a leader. The higher-ups probably see you as one of those who view us as just numbers from a warm, safe place every night.”

“…….”

“But even if you haven’t been on the battlefield, as a leader, you would have seen how many people lose their lives each day and how much damage has been done so far.”

“…….”

“You wouldn’t say you don’t know, would you?”

There was no reply.

But I already knew the answer.

It wasn’t just this silence that was her answer, but Luna’s expression as she carefully chose her words before opening her mouth was the answer.

“……Eighty, eighty million.”

“So, about 80 million people have died in the war so far.”

“No. That’s just an estimate of the people under my command. I don’t know the number of people who died before numerous forces and races gathered under me in the name of the Union.”

“Is that so?”

It’s okay if you don’t know.

I don’t know that kind of thing either.

I heard that 30% of humanity died before I was even born, but honestly, it doesn’t matter how many numbers you tell me. I don’t know what life was like before it was destroyed by magical creatures.

I don’t know if 30% died or 70% died.

Honestly, I wasn’t interested.

But it’s different since I participated.

I don’t care about before I was born, but since I picked up a sword, I have a sense of responsibility. I wanted to remember how many people died today and exactly who died.

‘Because there are people who no one else will remember if I don’t.’

Orphans with nowhere to return.

There were quite a few people like vengeful spirits who lost their entire families and burned their own lives with revenge.

Luna and I are on different levels of skill, but we had one thing in common.

That is, we are in a position where we have to remember someone’s death. We have seen countless deaths and will continue to see them in the future, so we must be more indifferent and calm in the face of death than anyone else in the world.

“Face it properly.”

“……Yes.”

“They weren’t good people anyway.”

“……Yes. Yes?”

I pointed to the other side with my finger.

At the end of my finger, many doors were visible.

“They’re all laboratories.”

“Are there laboratories in the basement too?”

“It’s also a laboratory with a strong smell of blood.”

“……The smell of blood is strong here too.”

“The stench is so bad that this level of blood smell is nothing.”

Ugh, what a smell. I felt like my nose would really rot if I kept this up, so I grabbed my nose tightly with my fingers.

On the other hand, Luna, who was slowly getting used to the smell of blood, couldn’t understand what kind of smell Seungwoo, who had adapted to the smell of blood before her, was smelling that made him act like that.

“Are your senses very sharp?”

“I guess so.”

Sway.

The tail, which had been hiding its appearance with magic until now, swayed in my vision for a moment. Then, it disappeared as if melting into the air.

“Because I’m a fox. My sense of smell is a bit sensitive.”

“……Eight-Tailed Fox.”

“It seems like there are legends about foxes with many tails in your world too.”

“It’s closer to a fairy tale than a legend. A nine-tailed fox burned the world, and no one except the Mother Tree could stop the Gumiho [a mythical nine-tailed fox in Korean folklore], so the world was destroyed in the fairy tale.”

“A cruel fairy tale.”

“The story ends with the Mother Tree planting seeds in the ashes of the burned world to sprout life, and that’s how the current world came to be.”

“Is it a kind of founding myth?”

Like the stories that exist in every country to strengthen the symbolism of the king. Fairy tales are easy for parents to read to their children, and children who are frequently exposed to such stories would naturally recognize the Divine Tree as the creator or parent.

“It’s not that grand of a story. Compared to legends or myths to deify the Mother Tree, fairy tales are relatively light.”

“I see.”

After a short conversation, we walked through the basement and realized how vast this space was. This one floor was larger than the combined 5th floor of the Magic Tower above.

Moreover, this wasn’t the end.

“It was an elevator.”

“Each elevator reaches a different floor.”

“Really. This one operates up to the 11th floor underground, that one from the 12th to the 22nd floor. There’s even an elevator that only operates on the 66th floor.”

“The security is very thorough.”

The upper floors of the Magic Tower don’t even have proper elevators, but the basement of the Magic Tower, which no one even knows exists, is full of all kinds of high-tech facilities.

In particular, this is the 1st basement floor.

“This is a space where magical creatures from outside are captured and experimented on.”

—Ah, so that’s why there was an abnormally large amount of blood flowing on the floor compared to the number of dead people. The amount of blood flowing from the corpse of one magical creature is enough to be equivalent to five or six people’s worth of blood if you’re generous.

The partitioned rooms on the 1st basement floor had elevator rooms, spaces for experimenting on magical creatures brought from outside, and spaces for raising them.

The 1st basement floor was a space where these various purpose spaces were intertwined.

“That’s amazing. How did they capture the magical creatures?”

“Logically, they wouldn’t use magical creatures created inside the city for experiments.”

“Hmm? I thought that was the right answer.”

“Think about it. Magical creatures that are created when the flow of magic gathers inside the city are generally not strong and small. But the magical creatures being experimented on here are not like that.”

Magical creature corpses were lying all over the basement.

The corpses of the magical creatures seemed to be waiting for the day they would rot, with long sword marks and unmelted ice embedded in vital spots such as the heart and organs.

“Th, that’s true, but there’s also the possibility that a giant magical creature could appear inside the city.”

“Yeah, if you’re really unlucky, a big magical creature might be born inside the city. And it will be immediately subjugated.”

“……Ah.”

“You said it yourself. This place is a city, but at the same time, it also plays the role of a country. What would happen if an unidentified monster appeared inside the city, disrupting the peace and threatening people?”

Living here for two weeks, Luna learned how the security of this place was maintained. First of all, this city was so huge that it broke the common sense of the ‘city’ she knew.

However, a city is just a city.

It was not comparable to a country.

In the meantime, the city’s administrative processing was as magnificent as a national level, not just a local area.

This place is larger than a typical city and smaller than a typical country.

So she named this place the largest city and the smallest country in the universe.

“The people who will handle this will leave immediately, trying to prevent people from being in danger. Quickly stepping in to rescue them if they are in danger is what the country does.”

Luna said immediately without thinking.

She answers these kinds of questions quickly. As expected of a princess of a country.

“If magical creatures that appear in the city are immediately eliminated, they can’t use them for bio-experiments. But it’s okay. There are plenty of magical creatures in this world.”

“……Ah. Could it be…”

“Hmm. It seems like you’re starting to catch on?”

“N, no, right? It’s not what I’m thinking, right?”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking. You have to tell me.”

I threw a word at her one by one, and she caught on.

It seems like Luna realized something.

Her appearance was like a student learning something one by one, so I asked a question to confirm whether what Luna realized was the correct answer.

“So, what did you think?”

“The executions that took place in the city. Was that done for this reason?”

“Execution? Tell me more properly.”

“Ah, so! The reason why people are tied to catapults and thrown out of the city as food for magical creatures is not a punishment to severely judge that person, but actually a means for the Magic Tower to periodically supply magical creatures. It’s not like that kind of urban legend, right? I’m thinking too deeply, right?”

“No.”

I answered in surprise.

“That’s the correct answer.”

“Re, really?!”

“Really.”

She got everything right, from the reason to the cause.

“The execution of death row inmates is not a punishment tailored to suffering, but a means to attract magical creatures closer and capture them. If you need magical creatures to use for experiments, but there are not enough death row inmates, then what?”

If you need magical creatures to use for experiments, but there are not enough death row inmates, then what?

Just make one.

“……Ha.”

A hollow laugh came from Luna’s mouth.

She was so dumbfounded that only wind came out of her mouth instead of words.

“Humans are stupid, so they quickly forget information that is not important or beneficial to them.”

That doesn’t mean they forget even shocking scenes, even if it’s information that is not beneficial to them.

“Then I’ll ask you one question here.”

“Is putting people on catapults and launching them, making them food for magical creatures while they are still alive, a shocking thing? Or not?”

“……It’s a very shocking thing.”

If your mental strength is weak, it’s not strange to be trapped in PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder] for the rest of your life. Then, would people who have seen such executions many times in this city for a long time commit crimes that would make them death row inmates?

“Ah, no way.”

“Luna. Originally, ‘no way’ is how people get caught.”

“This is really not it!”

“I told you earlier.”

Beyond that. A very foul smell of blood is vibrating more than the smell from the thousands of corpses scattered everywhere.

Luna arrived at the source of the blood smell and denied reality.

A few rotten corpses placed there made her struggle.

—……You know.

‘I know without you saying it.’

Because your words are heard by Luna.

There’s no need to say it. I know what you want to say.

The rotten corpses had holes all over them.